Friday, 14 March 2014

Puzzle Competitions: ZeKa 2014

Last weekend was the ZeKa competition in Croatia. It featured both a individual and a team competition this year. The individual competition was won by Goran Vodopija; Marko Obradović and Dragan Tolomanoski finished second and third respectively . The team competition was won by Dragan Tolomanoski, Bojana Vojnović and Vanja Fornazar.
I provided one of the Team rounds this time. The theme of the round was Imposters. The round consisted of four classic puzzle types. Each type had 4 puzzles, where one of the puzzles was an Imposter. It wasn't actually solvable as that puzzle type, but was solvable under a different set of rules. The rules of this puzzle was provided. The imposters weren't designed to be logically deduced, but purely intended to break down under the original rules.
The four puzzle types were LITS, with Double Back as imposter; Shikaku, with Corral as imposter; Skyscrapers with Haido as imposter; Slitherlink, with Turning Fences as imposter. Two of these combinations have appeared on my blog as a Double Trouble puzzle. One of them appeared as such on Grant Fikes' blog. The other is probably possible as a Double Trouble puzzle, but haven't tried that yet.

This test
consists of four sets of four puzzles. Each set of puzzles consists of a
certain type of puzzles. Except in each set there is an imposter. This puzzle
looks like the puzzle type, but isn’t actually solvable that way. The puzzle has
different rules, these rules are given with each puzzle type. The goal is to
figure out which of the puzzles is the imposter and solve all puzzles under the
correct rules.

Note:
some of the original puzzles might also be solvable under the imposter rules.
But the true imposter is the puzzle that is NOT solvable under the original
rules.

Thanks. They weren't meant to be hard. I tend to write harder puzzles for my blog as I enjoy writing such puzzles better as to test the logic in different genres. It helps me to understand the rules better and what is possibly with a given set of rules. When I'm able to write harder puzzles it means I get the logic of the genre well and will also be able to solve the puzzles.But for competitions I generally dial the difficulty down a bit so they're more time-friendly and solvable for beginners too.

Introduction

I'm Bram de Laat, long time logic puzzle enthusiast. I've been solving them for over 10 years, ever since running into a magazine during my preholiday puzzle booklet run.
I've been posting puzzles on puzzlepicnic for a few years now and using this blog to share some of my other puzzles.

Contact about Puzzles

You are allowed to contact me about my puzzles when you are stuck or think there is a problem with one of my puzzles. I'd appreciate a picture included, so I can see where the problem lies. Also if you would like to hear a bit more about a certain puzzle and have a question about it, I will try to answer them.My email is bram.d.laat [at] gmail [dot] com. Please note the missing e.